Precision farming need of the hour, says Swaminathan

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JUNE 9. Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, UNESCO chair in Ecotechnology, here on Saturday suggested precision farming as an important component of sustainable agriculture and said soil health care, water quality, plant health care, genetic homogeneity, abiotic stresses and post-harvest management were major issues that must be given particular attention.

Delivering Acharya Ranga Memorial Lecture on ``Science and Our Technological Future'' organised by the Indian Peasants Institute he said that most of the current biosafety and environmental concerns associated with genetically modified crops would be satisfactorily addressed scientifically during the next few years. It would mean that precision breeding had become an important factor of an economically and ecologically efficient precision farming system, he said.

The tendency to decry all advances in the breeding of transgenic crops would not be in the interest of sustainable food and nutrition security. He emphasised on the points of availability of food (production), access (purchasing power), absorption (from the viewpoint of safe drinking water, hygiene, primary health and education), vulnerability (to transient hunger) and sustainability (of production).

Dr. Swaminathan said that livelihood and income- earning opportunities, health care facilities, education, sanitation and hygiene factors were as important for food security as factors relating to availability of foodgrains in the market and access to clean drinking water.

The Governments must not desist from investing in research facilities though private and individual participation was essential. The farmer was not the beneficiary in any sense of

Government programmes as the latter was the real beneficiary of the former. In fact, the entire nation was the beneficiary of the farmer as it was he who gave us food.

He said the country's national capability in frontier areas of science and technology - biotechnology, information, communication and management science, had opened up uncommon opportunities for achieving an evergreen revolution and not just green revolution.

There should not be a mismatch between production and post- harvest technologies leading to the Government undertaking ``trade relief'' operations on lines similar to those of cyclone, flood and drought relief, he said. The local panchayat raj institutions and other forms of local bodies should be fully involved both in identifying constraints that limit production and in removing them, he said.

Dr. Swaminathan said there was an urgent need for convergence and synergy among programmes so that land and water conservation and usage could be dealt with in a scientific and holistic manner. The existing State landuse boards should be revitalised and reorganised in such a manner that they could give proactive advise to farm families on land using during the monsoon periods, he said.

He sought reorganisation of extension services and launching of imaginative community grain bank movement. Jobs which were livelihoods for Indians must be the bottom line of all our economic and development policies.

He said the opportunities for new employment included production of ecofoods, biological software, bio-pesticides and vermi- culture, bio-processing, health foods, herbal medicines, recycling of solid and liquid wastes and agricultural and agroprocessing machinery.

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